Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Note: Aside from any human error, these pages include all of the blog postings that we were notified about in the comments for Bring the Noise! Bring the Swarm! post. Many other posts are listed too, and work continues on getting a full set.

Now that you have participated or read postings from people who have participated, here are some of many things you get involved in to continue the effort to stop the war on Iraq.

I almost forgot about the March 19th Blogswarm amongst all the recent economic wreckage: five years ago today George Bush launched his doomed war of aggression against Iraq, or more specifically, Saddam Hussein. Well, he’s been dead for quite awhile now, but the war grinds on with daily death, mayhem, and horror. Bush today commemorated the anniversary with probably the most egregious bullshit he’s ever spouted, but you won’t see it in the US media. For that, we have to cross the pond to the UK: President Bush: Iraq war was a success and will end in victory.

Today is the Blogswarm Against The War, because we have been doing this for five freaking years now. I am caught up in silence, sadly, but there is one thing connected to the war I wanted to jot down, because it has been bugging me in blogland lately; Ferraro, blah, Steinem, blah, Feldt - especially Feldt. I mean, just look at Feldt:

Most reasonably intelligent people know that around one million people have died as a result of The Big Lie. Most people who don’t have their heads up their asses know that nearly 4000 Americans have lost their lives and tens of thousands more maimed or otherwise injured.

But how about those who are forgotten? Anyone familiar with the term “Refugee"?

A successful endeavor?- Suicides, family breakups, depression and social stigma are just some of the hidden legacies of the Iraq war among the more than one million US troops who have served in the campaign.

There were perhaps thirty of us, in the rain and wind, standing at a corner. Some held signs, others made peace signs with their fingers, others simply stood.

Several were from my congregation; its oldest members, in fact. A few were students. One was a little girl in a pink slicker, standing under the protective arm of her mother. She was the only child out on this night. Two photographers snapped pictures. At least four, maybe five of those in attendance were clergy; not young ones, but the young ones were tending to Holy Week duties and perhaps families; the retired ones were there in the rain, in clerical collars and raincoats and wrinkles.

From the beginning it was nothing more than an unjustified war of aggression by a group of countries, the US, UK and Australia, whose historical pretensions of moral superiority can now clearly be seen as false, disguises for greed and criminality. It has put the final nail in the coffin of the US economy and completely corrupted the already fragile US political system, probably beyond repair. Not only has it ruined countless lives, the money it has wasted would have gone a long way to solving the real crisis facing the world and that is climate change.

The Tribe was strong and proud. Its members lived in peace and prosperity in a time when other savage tribes scrabbled and fought and warred just to maintain meager survival. The Tribe had survived and grown because its people offered all they had - the best of their abilities, a fair share of their possessions, their very lives to the benefit of the tribe. And in return, they were rewarded, each to the measure of their efforts, so that the richer and stronger the Tribe became, the wealthier and more powerful each member and each family became along with it.

There are moments in time that will always be a major part of your memories, Some can be that very moment when something wonderful happens that changes your life. Some are the moments spent with friends and family over many years. Some come from a traumatic moment that you or someone close experiences. This story has all three. Try to bear with me as this post may get long with memories hitting me from all sides and pouring out.

"Why is it so difficult to organize opposition to the war?"- During the lunch hour, I, along with my young son, attended a protest to mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war on the north side of the capital here in Sacramento. The crowd numbered 75 to 100 people, and I recognized a number of them from past instances of activism related to peace issues, immigration, Chiapas and the environment.

I expected most people and the mainstream media to focus on American military expenditures and the U.S. body count inching its way up to 4000 with a few enterprising souls reminding us that Iraqi’s and Afghans are dying too and in that order. What I am concerned with did not get much mention at all, even when it originally transpired there was scant reportage and what notice that did exist failed to acknowledge the gravity of the matter. This of course is exactly what the Bush administration needed and wanted. And the American press allowed them to get away with it. If you haven’t figured it out already, I’m referring to the Downing Street Memorandum, the leaked document detailing the minutes of a classified July 2002 meeting between then British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his senior intelligence advisers namely England’s real life “C”, Sir Richard Dearlove.

Wednesday, March 19th marks the 5th anniversary of the Iraq War. Tonight I came home and took a shower by candle light. It was all I could think to do right now to commemorate the troops who have passed away and those that fight on.

I'd like to talk about how demand for oil is destroying the fabric of our country. I'd like to wax eloquent on the plight of the Iraqi people. But not now.

“Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision—no regrets, and this is a fight America can and must win. Defeating this enemy in Iraq will make it less likely we will face this enemy here at home.

I was in Amman, Jordan this morning, strolling through King Abdullah's lovely rose garden, thinking about this very thing, this 'freedom thing' that so many members of the opposition party like to say I'm obsessed with. The sun was shining brightly, the caged birds were singing, and well, it was hard not to be thinking about freedom.

My country is at war. That seems like a strange statement, especially when this is the fifth year it has been true. In examining my daily life, nobody would guess I was a citizen in a nation at war, and I am hardly unique in this respect. With the exception of those who have close friends or family serving in Iraq, the daily lives of my fellow Americans remain largely unaffected by this war. Is this why we are not out in the streets demanding immediate withdrawal? Or perhaps our inaction reflects the sort of learned helplessness that sets in after years of observing the utter lack of accountability which pervades our government. Our president and his minions do what they want without regard for the law, and our Congress refuses to reign them in at all.

What has become of America? Have we become the Nazis of the 21st Century? It’s bad enough we have done the following (see Video), but this story is very disturbing indeed. Our troops in Iraq HAVE gone insane!

NEW REPORT: ABU GHRAIB PRISONERS PACKED IN ICE WATER-FILLED GARBAGE CANS AND SENT INTO SHOCK, MILITARY POLICE SAY

None of this is apropos of anything, except that I wonder now, 5 years after the invasion, how the war will affect those who are fighting it 20 or 40 years from now. Will they talk about it? Will they feel that they were fighting for a just cause, or will they be angry at the loss of years of their life toward a war they opposed? I’m sure there will be some of both.

What Bush doesn't want you to hear about his created Hell for Iraqi civilians! First "Despite claims that the security situation has improved in recent months, the human rights situation is disastrous," Amnesty International says in its report, titled "Carnage and Despair: Iraq Five Years On." In a summary of the report, Amnesty writes that "a climate of impunity has prevailed, the economy is in tatters and the refugee crisis" keeps escalating.

Too many lives have been lost. Too many lies have been told. It’s time for the Bush administration to figure out that there is a time for us to end a Three Trillion Dollar War that has cost lives, jobs, families, mental health, and the moral authority of our nation.

In an hour or so, I will be at a vigil for those we’ve lost, and those we long to see again. Please join me by writing about an end to this war, or lighting your own candle and finding a like-minded group to tell Washington “no more war.”

If there is one story that describes this war it’s the tragedy of Col. Westhusing. Robert Bryce of the Texas Observer brought the suffering of the war to me with this one story. Colonel Ted Westhusing was true blue. A devout Catholic, he had a wife and three kids. When the war started, he truly believed in America. He believed what his superiors told him. He believed in the cause of this war. On June 5, 2005 he gave up believing. - it’s worth a read. Westhusing’s story is about how war broke his spirit, and how it’s depth of evil destroyed his soul.

Police said there were 10,000 people there. The organisers said there were 40,000. I don't know if I was included in their figures. All I know is that Trafalgar Square was full and that some groups were assempling in the adjoining streets. There was room to move on the edges of the square, but not much. I couldn't get a good photo showing everyone there. {with pictures}

On this day which is being commemorated as the fifth anniversary of the day we blundered into Iraq, I have never been more proud to be a Democrat. Not only do our two fine candidates for President both far outshine anything that the broken Republican brand has put forth, but representatives of our Party have put together a plan that is sweeping and intelligent, and a stark contrast to the mendacious tomfoolery that the Republicans and the Bush administration have been peddling these last 5 years.

Truth really can be stranger than fiction. Less than two weeks after her release from military prison, the German magazine Stern has just run an interview with Lynndie England, who is arguably one of the most clueless losers of the century.

Five years ago today I was eight months pregnant with my son and staying with my mom in her home day and night as she tried desperately to recover from surgery to remove a tumor and battled painfully against the cancer which had spread throughout her body. My daughter, still a toddler lie sleeping in an extra room my mom had made just for her. My mom lay in her own bed while I waited for her to call for me, for ice chips, for meds, for anything at all she needed. I sat staring at the TV without recognizing sound or images, a book in my lap, not knowing what to do next, just waiting.

most of us know, instinctively, that these three statements are absurd. yet these are all things republicans believe. how else can one explain the past five years of war in iraq? the bush administration would like you to believe that through war, we can achieve peace and ‘democracy’ in the middle east. they’d like you to think that freedom in this country will be protected by making us all slaves to the watchful eyes and ears of data-devouring, privacy-eviscerating government ‘security’ programs. and they want you to put those goddamn stubborn facts aside and just trust them to ensure america stays strong in the face of grave threats ‘out there’. truth be damned; dogma be praised.

As the lack of coverage of the Winter Soldier hearings has proved, the corporate media is not open to the full extent of anti-war feeling, so this blogswarm is one aspect of new media filling the gaps left by institutions who (despite some mea culpas over their cheerleading of the rush to war 5 years ago) still feel most comfortable reflecting elite opinion. I am put in mind of two oft quoted phrases: "Be the change you want to see in the world"-(Mahatma Gandhi) & Be The Media! Combined we are doing that, we are being the media but a different media, we are enacting a change, not beholden to corporate interests or imperial objectives. A grassroots, human movement of global reach and consciousness.

The Sun newspaper, in case you're not aware, is the British Murdoch-owned tabloid that helped Blair's government push the 45-minute WMD lie (even suggesting at one stage that they could have been deployed in 30 minutes), dedicated more column inches to a Labrador puppy thrown off an overpass than they did to the Abu Ghraib scandal (see bottom of this page), and endorsed Tony Blair on the eve of the post-Iraq general election by declaring that he had quite an enormous penis.

I was a lone voice. We had not been here very long and I didn't know people then like I do now, but that didn't stop me from voicing my opinion about the path we were about to pursue as a nation. I was working all the time back then in the run-up to cashing on my chips, and one of my coworkers was an Army wife - sorta. He was a full-time reservist and a recruiter, and she had never lived on base or been a part of the military culture like I had, and I had a hard time with her "Hoo-Ah" support. That was a full service public health clinic, and it was me and one of the nurse practitioners who were the sole dissenters. Everyone else thought we would just reprise the 1991 Gulf War and be done with it in short order.

Me, personally? This is really the fifth anniversary of the war? Never would have believed it. Never would have guessed that what seemed like a lean and mean smash and grab that wouldn't last very long would have ensnared us in a quagmire of this magnitude. Our allies have abandoned us and fallen by the wayside. Our Veteran's Administration is understaffed, underfunded and overwhelmed. You would have been laughed out of the room if you had said we would have this many troops in Iraq right now. I was in uniform five years ago today. I was, thankfully, in a unit that wasn't in danger of deploying and I was, more thankfully, able to get the hell out of the military without being stop-lossed.

Five years and hundreds of lies later, here we are. Approaching 4,000 American lives lost. Up to 100,000 estimated wounded Americans. 1,189, 173 Iraqi deaths. Millions of Iraqis displaced. A civil war. Al Qaeda IS in Iraq now. A demolished infrastructure. A broken U.S. military. No sign of reconciliation in sight. A majority of Americans want our troops out of Iraq. A majority of Iraqis want our troops out of Iraq. In my mind, the greatest cost of this occupation has been the dead and wounded. You can’t put a price on life. You can’t put a price on body parts or mental health.

The end of the Baathist regime in Iraq was meant to liberate the country from a repressive regime, as well as neutralising a perceived threat by that regime to the world. Years on, people are more oppressed than ever, as living standards have deteriorated and many still fear for their lives upon leaving their door, and the dangers posed by the terrorism which has found a home in Iraq are more real than ever.

We have to nip this kind of propaganda in the bud. This talking points campaign is aimed at the news byte conscious. The retraction is usually on page 20, unless its caught in such an embarrassing light, as in this case.

No doubt, we are all tired of listening to the sound bites carefully selected from today’s Presidential Propaganda Catapult launch from the Pentagon. I just want to unpack one paragraph. Have a gander and see what you think:

"Because we acted, Saddam Hussein no longer fills fields with the remains of innocent men, women and children."

Saddam’s dead, sure. But we have been responsible for putting a lot of innocent Iraqi men, women, and children in the ground too.

After 5 years of war, the death of tens of thousands of Iraqi's as well as 3,990 American troops, President Bush claims that the War in Iraq has been 'worth it'. History will not be kind to this man. Today, over 300 progressive bloggers are swarming the blogosphere with their thoughts and opinions on this fifth anniversary of Bush's War in Iraq.

While others out there will offer reflections on what it has meant, I am simply going to post the service, readings and meditation we had the day after the bombs started to fall. Context is everything: I serve a congregation that is half a mile from the nation's oldest private military college and needed to be aware of people's thoughts even as I was and always have been totally against this so-called war.

but then i realized that i don't have the heart or the stomach to write a carefully researched analytical piece on the implications of the war (although i am grateful to the people who can.)

i just want you to think of the people you love best: your kids, your nephews and nieces, your parents, your girlfriend/boyfriend/partner/husband/wife, your best friends, your grandparents, and then i want you to imagine them dead. killed by a bomb that fell on their bed while they were sleeping, blown up by a suicide bomber while they were shopping for food, shot in the head by a soldier because they didn't understand the command to stop, ripped apart by an improvised explosive devise that their tank ran over, burned to death in an explosion after a rocket hit their vehicle, tortured to death by militia members or american soldiers, wasted away completely by diarrhea from some water-borne illness, caught in the crossfire between someone and someone else...

Many years ago, when I was working at University City High School, a war called Desert Storm started. The students were electrified and could talk of nothing else. UC High is in very conservative country, for the most part, but there were quite a few kids who understood that going to war for oil was insane. The students who thought it was great came to school wearing red, white and blue top hats, little pins with pro-war slogans and waving baby American flags. They'd ask, "Aren't you so proud to be an American?" They were baffled by my negative response. I always added, "I may not be proud to be an American, but I am always grateful to have been born in America."

Although those responsible for the war made the dubious claim that the invasion was necessary to protect the security of the United States, even their most credulous supporters eventually saw the unlikelihood of any true threat from a nation so much smaller and more vulnerable than our own.

Five years on from the launch of the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq, it's a good time to take stock of the results.

Doubtless you'll have your own sources, but at the moment I'm finding Juan Cole's website a very good one for reporting the events on the ground - at the very least it gives the lie to the old 'surge is working' narrative that the MSM has been promoting over the past few months.

Little Warren Iraq is five today. He’s been something of a problem child. Never out of trouble, always in the papers, some people have said he’s symptomatic of what’s wrong with the world today. He’s something of a talisman to those who want to see a better and fairer society.

Today is the fifth anniversary of Bush's invasion of Iraq, which should prompt some reflection upon where we are and how we got here. Accordingly, here are some of my (many, far too many...) posts on the mess in Mesopotamia:

World against War protest yesterday. See reports with pics from Jamie and Lenin. Turnout was a few tens of thousands - a pretty impressive mobilisation, all things considered - of which 6 buses from Greater Manchester.

Today is the 5 year anniversary of Bush's unprovoked war against Iraq. After the American media abandoned their crucial role of informing the people and decided to instead sell this war, it took years for the full scope of Bush's lies to emerge. Now that we know how he deliberately misled us into this war, it is mind-blowing to see the utter lack of accountability which has followed. Impeachment proceedings should begin immediately, but we must not lose sight of an even greater responsibility - ending this war. Today should be a day of reflection for what we as individual Americans can do to make this happen.

The so-called war in Iraq is not a war. It never was a war. Our Iraq adventure has been circumscribed by two events: an invasion and an occupation.

Patrick Cockburn of CounterPunch explains the invasion, which began on March 19, 2003: While there was some conflict and some resistance, he says, by and large the reason the allied forces marching to Baghdad "had an easy passage ...[was] because the Iraqi army did not fight. Even the so-called elite Special Republican Guard units, well paid, well equipped and tribally linked to Saddam, went home."

Here’s a Bush marking the five year anniversary slide show. I’ll save you the trouble, because who actually wants to look at him?. He said we’ll stay with the course while he acknowledged the cost has been much more than anticipated. Of course all the costs are much more. As I remember the war supposedly ended about six weeks after it began. Courting Destiny began as our way of protesting the RNC in New York in 2004. Our original url, freenynyfrombush.blogspot.com is one of our proudest partial lines. We didn’t know that some crazy radical rightists thought they ran the blogosphere, and yes we can admit it now, made us kind of cry. We wouldn’t back down then and we’re certainly not going to back down now.

The President of the United States awoke today as if it were any other day. He showered, shaved and dressed himself in a suit. He doubtless ate breakfast and joked with friends about this or that. Eventually he made his way to a podium where, as Commander in Chief, he presented his analysis of the past five years of war in Iraq. He was upbeat, arrogant and unrepentant. It was George W. Bush at his finest, full of confidence, basking in the glory of his military successes.

It's hard to claim chocolate as anti-war; thousands gallons of oil are used to produce and ship it around the world and it's such a bourgeois item. BUT food is community. Food brings people together. Food defines relationships. Food brings peace. Imagine Iraqis and Americans and Africans and Europeans sitting down to a meal together. Somewhere, in between the shared culture of nourishment, positive conversation occurs, opinions are challenged, expanded.

The Iraq War was a war fought in Iraq but not against Iraq by the Coalition of the Willing against the forces of Soddomite reprision.

Causes of the Iraq War1. The Soddom Hussein. The Soddom was the evil ruler of Iraq. It was a pro-Western ally and thus widely hated by the Arab Multitudes, and also an anti-Western fanatic and thus widely hated by the Civilised World.

Today, as we mark that dark mid-March day in 2003 when President Bush, complete with a raised fist pumping air like he was about to go into the final playoffs to give "'em one more for the Gipper..." gesture and dispatched the first soldiers off to war, the cold, harsh light of day makes it a heluva lot easier to see all the lies.

As I wrote on Monday, the Greenville Antiwar Society candle lighting took place on Sunday night, downtown at Bergamo Square. Below are some photographs of the event, which I am sharing here as my contribution to the Blogswarm Against the War.

In the center, there is a beaded structure, representing the Iraqi people--hundreds of beads symbolize the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead. It would be impossible to light a million candles, so this is the best we could do.

It’s March 19 and Blogswarm Day! Here is a list of my posts on Iraq in the last few days. I’ll add more throughout the day today since I post on Iraq almost every day. Hopefully some good video coverage of the mass protest in Washington, DC today will be posted. ~ Lo

Today is the fifth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The invasion began at 9:34PM EST on March 19, 2003. The U.K. codenamed it Operation Telic, and in Australia it was known by the name Operation Falconer.

So, how's it going? How do we "measure that success?", as the Bush regime so often says?

Here we are again. We arrive at yet another anniversary of Bush’s glorious war. Why are millions of innocent people suffering for so long? His reasons for the calamitous blunder and debacle were far from the stated purposes. He cared nothing for the Iraqi people and had no proof for his WMD and al-Qaeda claims. He wanted war for power, profit, oil, and last, but not least, his insurance as “war president” to win his 2004 re-election.

Well, that went horribly badly, didn't it? Yes, it was March 20, 2003, that we (and by "we" I mean the West in general, even those of us who aren't officially directly involved) embarked upon the living, breathing, definition of an illegal war. It was billed, of course, as the necessary removal of a brutal dictator who was conspiring with Osama Bin Laden while constructing stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. We would be greeted as liberators, and everybody would be back home in six months.

For those of us who were against this war since well before it began this has been a pretty frustrating five years. We marched, we wrote letters and we voted. None of that seemed to help. In fact: it seems like things have just gotten worse.

If you're like me the last five years have made you feel a bit powerless. But we don't have to feel that way. Here's a couple of modest suggestions to things we can do today to make things a little bit better all by our lonesome.

I've been thinking about what I could add to the disent of the current occupation of the White House by one George W. Bush. A president (in name only) who has taken this nation in a direction that goes against every principle that every day Americans hold dear. Where to even start. From his stealing of the elections in 2000 and 2004 to his current approval of waterboarding never has there been such an assult and disreguard on the constitution of this country. And not only has this administration preverted the electorial process it has gone one step further by eating it's own if you recall Katherine Harris.

As of tomorrow we are entering year 6 of a war that has no end in sight. Monday (or in this case Thursday) morning quarterbacking shows the world that George W. Bush’s 5-year invasion of Iraq was set in motion without even a cursory look back at the 5 thousand year history of the region. Any person can easily open a junior high school textbook and see the long-term history of Iraq is teeming with ethnic conflict, religious hatred, deep-rooted enmity, and endless occupations. And it doesn’t take a whole lot of in-depth investigation to learn that the short-term history of Iraq since World War I is even more revealing.

If you listen to the hollow words of George Bush in that video, he said "I know that the families of our military are praying that all those who serve will return safely and soon. Millions of Americans are praying with you for the safety of your loved ones and for the protection of the innocent. For your sacrifice, you have the gratitude and respect of the American people. And you can know that our forces will be coming home as soon as their work is done.

It has been five years since the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. And so the day of protesting began as per usual in the no free speech zone known as America:

Today, police arrested more than 30 people “who blocked entrances at the Internal Revenue Service building” as “part of a day of protests to mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.” Demonstrators also converged in Miami and San Francisco, and other cities across the country.

Reasons to end the imperialist dynasty as stated by the IVAW:*Corporate profiteering is driving the war in Iraq*The occupation is a primary motivation for the insurgency and global religious extremism*Our national “moral authority” is being undermined

For 5 long years, the United States has been engaged in an illegal war against Iraq. That is 5 years too many, 5 years too costly, in so many ways.Five years after our military first put on an explosive show of its firepower, nearly 1 in 5 Iraqis is now a displaced citizen or a refugee in another nation, according to the International Organization for Migration. That's nearly 5.1 million human beings—2.7 million displaced and 2.1 million refugees—who have been forced to flee their homes.

Our economy is failing, and it will continue to fail as long as this war goes on. Watch this video, please. It's only about 90 seconds long, but it's from the BBC. And you do really have to get unfiltered news about America from the BBC or the Guardian or another unbiased source, because the American media will not tell you the truth. They're trying to scare you into keeping the economy moving, even as it's grinding to a halt.

Gabe was there for two tours, his discharge date extended. He lost men in his unit, close friends, to sniper fire and IED’s. He came home with hundreds of photos, some heart-wrenching, some so horrifying I still see them in my sleep. And even though he’s home, he is still in the war, because it is still in him. Almost two years after his return stateside, he checked himself into the state psychiatric hospital for a week to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder.

I know a guy who's served at least two tours in Iraq. I've fallen out of touch with C because he no longer dates my friend. After his first tour he came back and things seemed okay for a while and then things fell apart between the two of them. The final straw came when C had an opportunity to retire from the Army but decided to re-up because he was getting a huge bonus. He's a weapons specialist with the Stryker Brigade based at Fort Lewis and the Army was anxious to have him back. My friend couldn't handle his PTSD, the hair-trigger anger. She couldn't handle her own gut-wrenching anxiety either.C was in Mosul on December 21, 2004, when a suicide attack killed 22 and wounded at least 72 in a dining hall. It took two days for my friend to hear if he was alive. Six of his fellow soldiers from Fort Lewis were killed in the attack. He told horror stories about being terrified of small children because they could be hiding weapons and could kill you. When I first met him he was a quiet, smart young man.

Because this is about peace, and not war, I thought this quote highly appropriate. For those who may not remember the movie "War Games" (really you should watch this great classic,) it goes off the premise that all of our missile defenses and offenses are ready to be given into the control of a computer programmed with basic A.I. The conclusion is that nuclear war is a lot like a game of Tic-Tac-To. When you have two players of equal skill the game always ends in a stalemate. No one wins, everyone loses.

I often hear from my friends, who are very much activists in their own right, that they feel their efforts at times are not enough. I have to admit, just speaking out, just talking about the injustices of the world does not seem like enough effort at times. I often say that we as citizens seem content to sit back while civil liberties are stripped from us, so long as we still have the right to complain about it. Soon enough the right to complain will be the only right that we have left... and then they will take that away too. The Prophet Mohammed (P.B.U.H.) said, "If a man sees evil, let him change it with his hands, if he cannot, let him change it with his voice, if he cannot, let him hate it in his heart..." and on the last part of the quote I've heard two different interpretations, one says, "... beyond that there is no faith," while the other says, "but this is the lowest form of faith," in reference to simply hating it, or feeling bad about it in your heart.

From the horror of 9/11 to the invasion of Iraq; the truth about WMD to the rise of an insurgency; the scandal of Abu Ghraib to the strategy of the surge -- for six years, FRONTLINE has revealed the defining stories of the war on terror in meticulous detail, and the political dramas that played out at the highest levels of power and influence.

Today I join hundreds of people at Blogswarm, thousands throughout the blogosphere, and millions around the world, in mourning the day that George Bush used the US Army to invade Iraq and throw the world into turmoil.

Five years. Five. Fucking. Years. I never ever swear on my blog but today I am angry.

"An Iraqi mother in a van fired on by US soldiers says she saw her two young daughters decapitated in the incident that also killed her son and eight other members of her family.The children’s father, who was also in the van, said US soldiers fired on them as they fled towards a checkpoint because they thought a leaflet dropped by US helicopters told them to “be safe”, and they believed that meant getting out of their village to Karbala."

In my mind, a protest serves several purposes. It is a PR action, it can bolster morale within a movement (and be quite empowering), and it can effect direct action. With the media being the way it is, massive numbers and effective cleverness are necessary for a protest to make waves. It needs to be something new!

They lied us into a war. They are actively working against the will of the people. And they are risking this country’s security by misfiring our military resources and they won’t even lift the self-imposed blind-fold long enough to take a real peek at how they’re doing.

While listening to Democracy Now! on KPFK 90.7 out here in L.A. yesterday I heard Rahul Mahajan from the blog Empire Notes talking about what has happened in the 5 years that have passed since the start of the US invasion of Iraq on March 19th, 2003:"Children who were in 7th or 8th grade during the invasion of Iraq are now deciding whether or not to enlist and be sent to Iraq to kill or die. Iraq itself has been changed beyond recognition, irrevocably altered. Depending on which study you believe, 400,000 to 1.3 million have died of violence, perhaps 25% of them at the hands of American soldiers. Over 4 million have lost their homes, half of them now refugees in foreign lands..."

The Iraqi war will be 5 years old on March 19th. Here are a few of the costs in money and in lives lost:The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that the war in Iraq costs up to 9 billion per month. That's on top of the $13 billion spent on the initial deployment.Here is a summary of the costs:Initial deployment of troops: $9 billion to $13 billion

Today marks the anniversary of evil. A nation was co-opted by its leaders and remains compromised. While I started many different themes for today, I ended up trashing them all as I addressed the way that the war, perhaps from afar, touched my life.

I remember that time 5 years ago - it was a time of hope in my life for other reasons and the specter of war worked to change that.

I thought about what would be most appropriate to write here. Simple criticism of the Iraq War, while certainly valid, lacked the historical context that I wanted to provide linking this war to the way our government always operates. The Iraq War was not just a 'botched job', a 'miscalculation in the fight for freedom', or a 'misguided attempt to attack the evil-doers', it was instead a simple application of the way our government works. Power and profit for the few, squalor and death for the others.

There were protests all around the Bay Area yesterday, though none too well attended compared to before the war. One reporter seemed impressed however by how media-savvy the protesters were, with handy press packets and convenient up-to-the-minute text-messaging capabilities.I prefer freewayblogging to organized protests for a couple of reasons. One, you don't need thousands of people, which is a real time-saver in terms of organizing and logistics. Two, you don't have to rely on the media to reach a significant number of people, or have to depend on them to transmit your message faithfully: you can say whatever you want, unedited. {with pictures of big signs! On freeways!}

In light of President George W. Bush, Jr.'s announcement to stay the course in Iraq today and recent stock market instabilities, the Federal Reserve has made an announcement of its own, a proposal to eliminate the printing of the U.S. dollar. "It's just barely worth the cost of printing it anymore," announced Federal Reserve spokesperson Janet Hamilton this morning in the wake of Bush's plans to continue sinking money into the U.S. led destruction of Iraq. "This essentailly guarantees that the value of the U.S. dollar will continue to decline," Hamilton stated today on the fifth anniversary of the invasion.

It’s a very sad anniversary today. The war in Iraq is already five years old. Five years too many. I chose to join the Blogswarm today because I’m opposed to crimes against humanity and all living beings, and what could be more criminal than a war launched under false pretense and which never had any other aim than to assert dominance? Some will argue that wars have been waged for as long as humans have existed and that it can’t be avoided, a necessary evil, they might say. I say that war is a demented game played by morally deficient politicians, their advisers and their special buddies, who are so caught up in continually asserting their authority, gaining power and riches that they lose sight of the value of human life. I can imagine that to them, war must seem like nothing more than a video game, played live and in supra high definition.

I almost forgot about this but it is too important. This war is wrong. Anyone who hasn't figured that out by now I don't believe can have their mind changed by anything I say. War is NOT the answer. I'm not sure it every is. Imagine how many lives this war has ruined. That should give you something to think about for the at least the entire day.

When I started the March 19 Blogswarm Against the Iraq War with the blogger who does Ten Percent, it was done in part to counter pro-war bias and censorship in the corporate media. So, it is fitting that my contribution to the Blogswarm be to publicize and add to an action alert from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting on Winter Soldier.

3/19/08 FAIR Action Alert:Dozens of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars gathered in Silver Spring, Maryland last weekend for the Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan hearings (3/13/08-3/16/08), where they offered harrowing testimony about atrocities they had witnessed or participated in directly. The BBC predicted that the event, organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, "could be dominating the headlines around the world this week" (3/7/08). The hearings were covered as far afield as the U.K. (Guardian, 3/17/08), Australia (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 3/14/08), Croatia (Javno, 3/16/08), and Iran (Press TV, 3/14/08). Yet there has been an almost complete media blackout on this historic news event in the U.S. corporate media.

Today is the five year anniversary of the US Invasion in Iraq. Whether you support this war or not, please take a moment out of your day to give thanks to the brave men and women who have sacrificed for our country.

Here we are again- 5 years of war in Iraq! 5 long years! 3990 dead American soldiers, 60,000 plus wounded American soldiers, millions of Iraqis displaced, and we will never know how many Iraqis have died in this war turned occupation of their country. We are spending $12 Billion dollars a month, $17 million dollars every hour and $275 million dollars a day. We know that 935 lies were told by various members of the administration that instills fear so that the citizens of this country would support this Global War on Terror in Iraq. That’s quite a lot of numbers to keep track of; but the best number of all is 307 and that is the number of days left until January 19, 2009, which means, we will be free of the dangerous, fear mongering Bush administration.

Who knew that we Americans would be the ones feeling the shock and awe of the invasion of Iraq?

We’re shocked at the number of deaths of American military and Iraqi civilians. At last count, we’ve lost 4,000 soldiers. Who knows how many Iraqis are dead: some estimates run as high as a million casualties..

You’re 5 years old today. You’ve done some pretty cool stuff for such a young thing. And your daddy W and granddaddy Dick have done an amazing job of feeding you with the blood of thousands of innocent Iraqis, young American, British and other nameless countries’ soldiers, not to mention the trillions of dollars they’ve spent on you to make sure you can continue to trounce, stumble and cavort around over there, drunk from all the success. And you’re not done yet are you? Uncle McCain is gonna keep you in the money for maybe another hundred years.

In the latter part of 2002, and through the first part of March of 2003, President George W. Bush and his claque of war-mongering neo-cons and fellow travelers, aided by craven, weak, lick-spittle members of the House of Representatives and Senate, conspired to send our soldiers to war. I say conspired because that is accurate.

We on the left should frame our opposition to the war as opposition to empire.- Adaner Usmani

Some folks at Harvard Law School are doing just that with their event series, Confronting Empire: 5 Years of War in Iraq. The series is over, but the website has a link for each and every speaker, many of whom have freely downloadable articles. I’m told that proceedings from it, will, in time, appear. [And I’ll point you to my faves.] The series was sponsored by, Justice for Palestine at Harvard Law and:

This singing and dancing trio greeted antiwar protestors in downtown San Francisco on the first day of the sixth year of the Iraq war.

Wouldn't it be great if we could be confident that our Democratic Presidential aspirants would end Cheney-McCain-Bush's occupation of Iraq? If we knew they would not bomb Iran? Too bad such any such confidence would be misplaced. Our Democrats are war weasels.

Two days ago, the worst person ever, Dick Cheney, made a statement of unfathomable arrogance, ignorance and callousness during his latest victory tour of Baghdad. And by "victory tour," I mean the type of visit that is unannounced because the security situation there is rubbish. He said, in defiance of the laws of reason, decency and definition:

An interview with Army Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling, US commander in the north of Iraq, was broadcast today on NPR's Morning Edition, as part of NPR's coverage on the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq (Operation Desert Fox). Several of the things Hertling said struck me as reminiscent of classical colonialist discourse. Entirely unselfconscious, commonsensical, self-evident, and as as with all ruling ideology, it all just goes without saying. I consider Hertling's statements, the way he frames the discussion, symptomatic of what the Iraq adventure is all about.

Today I'm participating in the blogswarm protesting the war in Iraq. It's well past time to get out. It should never have started. Peace and self-determination will sustain humanity on this planet long after the oil has dried up. All I am saying - to myself, to the warmongers and the seriously greedy, to the generation to follow: is give peace a chance.

For those of you who don't yet know, I am a Vietnam Veteran and an Anti-war Protester: then and now. I was diagnosed with PTSD by the Veterans' Administration in 1985 (the first year it occurred to me to ask "Whhhaaaaat?"); I received a disability rating in 1996, which was upgraded to 100% service-connected in 2004.

A gross failure that ended with a humiliating retreat writes Partick Cockburn for the Independent.

The war in Iraq has been one of the most disastrous wars ever fought by Britain. It has been small but we achieved nothing. It will stand with Crimea and the Boer War as conflicts which could have been avoided and were demonstrations of incompetence from start to finish. Full story here.

I am at a loss for words to add which will shed new light, which will persuade the likes of Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic party leadership and influential Republicans to bring articles of impeachment forward in order to bring George W. Bush, Richard B, Cheney, and their teams of loyalists to account for the horrors they have wrought and continue to wreak against the Constitution, against the US and against Iraq.

Anyway, seeing as it's already toward the end of another long day here in great British GMT-land, here's hoping we're allowed to cheat a little by being short on the words (again), but a bit 'bigger' on the pictures. After all, you know what they (and us), always say about every picture telling a story and how each one is worth a thousand words.

However, where real, raw, war photos are concerned [like those collected by Canadian, Roedy Green], each image is worth - at least -10,000 words - or more.

Though I don't really post that much about politics, I decided at the last minute I'd make a contribution to this blogswarm.

I am basically just including a few videos to highlight some of the people that should be held personally responsible for the horrible carnival ride so many people have been thrown onto these past five years.

I Wanna Love You Better Whatever It Takes:five years too manyYouTube video with excerpts from Martin Luther King speeches against the Vietnam War that are relevent to the Iraq War today.

As the propaganda machine chugs along, our government has seemingly set itself up quite lovely for future years to come. Mind you, that it is our government, and it's few powerful benefactors and not the American public, that will reap the rewards of our current policy of perpetual warfare.

There were so many directions I could take—and then I saw this photo in the 3/16 "New York Times" that stuck with me.

The photo showed a funeral procession in Baghdad for Monthir Khalaf, a local soccer coach and a former member of the Iraqi national soccer team. That's his son, in tears holding a photo of his father. Monthir was killed the previous Thursday by gunmen, but I could find few other details. I can only assume he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught in the crossfire between Sunnis, Shiites and others taking advantage of the chaos in Iraq.

If that is correct, there is an incredibly telling way to gain the enthusiastic support of Americans for any future war that becomes absolutely necessary. If that statement has an impossible ring, please reflect on the following proposal and be very honest with yourself in assessing its potential effectiveness.

With these words ringing in my ears for the last few weeks, I decided to participate in the Blogswarm against the War. However, because I read Madison’s words in another book, Chalmers Johnson's Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, I’m combining my Blogswarm efforts with my book-reviewing duties for the Spring Reading Challenge. I hope you don’t mind my squishing two mosquitoes with one slap. (I’m a birder, so I don’t kill birds with stones or any other objects!)

Today is March 19 Iraq War Blogswarm. And so we will, each of us, do what we can to bring this particular Bush administration criminal enterprise to an end. Unfortunately, I'm on the road today, so my participation will be as spotty as it is heartfelt. More as the day progresses, I hope. In the meantime, a reminder:

MoveOn.Org is sponsoring candlelight vigils tonight to mark the fifth anniversary of the war's beginning on March 19, 2003. In my neighborhood, one is at 7 p.m. at the intersection of Lincoln Blvd.and Rose Ave in Venice.

this post -- as part of this blogswarm, will focus on the forced economic trade- offs we made, by choosing to fund this war, rather than address our own domestic problems more adequately. all data is courtesy of the national priorities project.

I swore I wasn't going to post on this again. I told myself that I have done enough ranting about the war. I bitched here, Five Years Of Illegal War Has Wrought So Much, here, McCain's Big Bad Threat; Scare Tactics & GOP, here, Bush Credits Faith In Killing All Them Damn Foreigners, and here A Picture That Needs To Be Seen [Pic]. Not to mention, commenting in numerous other posts.

I was in Germany, .. 2 weeks before the Attack on Iraq. That was 'them Day's' and Weeks, when the 'whole World' participated in a massive 'For Freedom/Anti-War Protest 'for Iraq. All these People in Germany and 'Elsewhere had been more than convinced, that Bush&CO. has to bend under this 'global Pressure.

Five years. An estimated one Million Iraqi lives. Almost four thousand American lives. Countless crippled and injured. A trillion dollars. A country destroyed. Thousands of war crimes. Americas position in the world. The US economy in tatters. Four dollar a gallon gas. Two or three captured terrorists. And a megalomaniac who has single-handedly set the United on its own path of destruction and been allowed to do so. And then there is 9-11 and the man, George Herbert Bush’s agent Tom Ossman, aka Osama Bin Laden, who has never been caught, but who is probably already dead, or laughing it up somewhere nice and cozy.

I really want to write something smart, something new, something that sums it all up. But what can I offer? I have never seen war. I type in the comfort of my warm apartment, with snow glistening in the sunshine outside, my breakfast beside me and my loved ones only a simple phone call away.

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not much for Patriotism. Love of a Nation/Government has always seemed far too Abstract.

I often find myself lost in the “logic” when someone attempts to explain why I should “Love” an Ethereal Entity that, more times than not, seems to be operating against My Interests, as well as the Interests of those I Love.